The passion never died for millions of fans, though, and a couple in particular: The two-person development team behind Pokémon Uranium finally shared their work with the world last week after nine years of development.

Within days, the free, fan-made Pokémon role-playing game was downloaded more than 1.5 million times.

The game was in the same vein as the traditional Pokémon RPG games that have existed on Nintendo's handheld platforms for decades. Here are some of its main features:

A whole new world to explore, called the Tandor region.

More than 150 new Pokémon alongside some from the official games.

A new type of Pokémon — nuclear.

A robust online trading and battling system.

Dozens of hours of content, from eight gym battles to an original storyline for players to follow.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first fan project Nintendo has killed, nor will it be the last. Last week, Nintendo gave the same treatment to AM2R, a remake of the Game Boy classic Metroid 2 that had been in development for four years.

Nintendo has a right to protect its copyrights, but it's a bummer it could be litigious toward people who are just showcasing their love for Nintendo games. The existence of Pokémon Uranium wasn't going to hurt any other official Pokémon games, just as AM2R wasn't going to hurt the basically dead Metroid series.

Hopefully, after years of hard work the makers of these games are able to share them with people in some way.